Following a successful pilot project, the northern German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein has decided to move from Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office to Linux and LibreOffice (and other free and open source software) on the 30,000 PCs used in the local government. As reported on the homepage of the Minister-President: Independent, sustainable, secure: Schleswig-Holstein will […]
A good number of European cities and countries have tried Linux and open source software in the past. They use it for a few years and then they have almost always have quietly gone back to MS Windows and Office products.
As much as I enjoy using Linux, (and no, I don’t use Arch), and open source for my own needs, I would be willing to bet after a few years, this German state will quietly move back to Micosoft products again.
As the result of a change in the city’s government, to leave LiMux and at the time, critics of the decision blamed the mayor and deputy mayor and cast a suspicious eye on the US software giant’s decision to move its headquarters to Munich.
Its only cheap because its normalized in that domain. As more work is done to iron out bugs and get people in the office space the feature they need on Linux the more experience IT folks will get support.
Its an investment as always. There is no such thing as a free lunch
Microsoft certainly tries it’s best to keep you locked into their ecosystem by making it inconvenient but not impossible to leave though that’s not the real reason, it’s security. Businesses and especially governments are scared of nation state hackers contributing malicious code to open source products and falsely assume it’s safer to use closed source software because those incidents aren’t public. There’s so much great software out there I’d love to use and the first question I’m asked when I bring it up is can you prove China hasn’t contributed code?
A good number of European cities and countries have tried Linux and open source software in the past. They use it for a few years and then they have almost always have quietly gone back to MS Windows and Office products.
As much as I enjoy using Linux, (and no, I don’t use Arch), and open source for my own needs, I would be willing to bet after a few years, this German state will quietly move back to Micosoft products again.
Just a coincidence.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-is-shifting-back-from-microsoft-to-open-source-again/
The intense pressure from Microsoft doesn’t have anything to do with it I’m sure.
It’s cheaper to find support
*at first
Its only cheap because its normalized in that domain. As more work is done to iron out bugs and get people in the office space the feature they need on Linux the more experience IT folks will get support.
Its an investment as always. There is no such thing as a free lunch
Society favours the short term and it will be a long time before Linux sys admins are cheaper than Windows sys admins
Or even asking random kid put of high school how to do x
Who else to start the trend than the government that was created for the public good in the first place.
Microsoft certainly tries it’s best to keep you locked into their ecosystem by making it inconvenient but not impossible to leave though that’s not the real reason, it’s security. Businesses and especially governments are scared of nation state hackers contributing malicious code to open source products and falsely assume it’s safer to use closed source software because those incidents aren’t public. There’s so much great software out there I’d love to use and the first question I’m asked when I bring it up is can you prove China hasn’t contributed code?